If you don’t have the time to read the 54-page Joint Land Needs Analysis and Study from Hemson Consulting, let me summarize it for you in six words: Barrie doesn’t need more industrial land.
Or at least the city won’t for many years.
The case for annexing land from surrounding municipalities, Hemson says bluntly, is “relatively weak.”
That certainly runs contrary to what we’ve been hearing over the past year since Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall appeared at a provincial standing committee meeting in November 2023 to outline Barrie’s desire to annex parts of Oro-Medonte and Springwater.
He said the city needed “employment lands beyond the city’s existing boundary to attract new investment and allow existing businesses to expand.”
Based on their subsequent comments, it’s fair to say the mayors and councils of those adjoining townships were blindsided by Nuttall's decision to make public what had been, up until then, discussions behind closed doors.
Barrie’s mayor did mention “potential additional housing opportunities” at the standing committee, but it almost seemed like an afterthought. The emphasis both at the committee and in subsequent public comments was on industry, especially the need for “shovel-ready" land.
As recently as last month, Deputy Mayor Robert Thomson was quoted as saying Barrie needed “more land to accommodate large manufacturing … The sad part is, we couldn’t accommodate them today.”
Here’s what the Hemson report had to say about those claims:
- Barrie likely has sufficient employment land to meet demand through 2051. That should be no surprise. A report from another consultant, Watson and Associates Economists, was done just five years ago and said exactly the same thing. That study, and subsequent updates, found the city had 787 hectares (1,945 acres) of vacant employment, enough to accommodate the expected employment growth until 2051. The new Hemson report estimate was 793 hectares (1,960 acres) of vacant industrial land.
- Annexing additional land outside the current boundary “would not resolve the immediate shortfall due to multi-year timelines” for infrastructure planning and development. It would take many, many years to develop the land so there would be no benefit to industry now looking for land. In short, Hemson suggests annexing land from adjoining municipalities would be “ineffective” in addressing Barrie’s short-term needs.
- The Oro-Medonte land being targeted “appear to have constraints, including lack of large employment land parcel opportunities.” Much of it is environmentally sensitive. It’s the same story for the Springwater land. (To be fair, part of Mayor Nuttall’s presentation to the standing committee back in 2023 talked about protecting the land around Little Lake, most of it already city-owned.)
- The terrain of much of the Springwater land sought by Barrie along Highway 400 is too hilly for industry and too far from existing services.
Both Oro-Medonte and Springwater have sufficient designated industrial land now, so they don’t need Barrie’s offer to service additional property within their boundaries, although Springwater’s residential growth projections mean it will likely need new industrial land down the road.
Although more study would be needed, the Hemson report does say a case could be made for Barrie adding what it calls “community area land supply.”
In other words, residential neighbourhoods with some retail.
This is partly because the city hasn’t been meeting the density targets, which are called “ambitious but achievable,” to accommodate our population expectations.
But expanding Barrie’s boundaries to add more houses was never part of the city’s argument for annexation – it has all been about land for industry – and would require a major about-face.
There’s a simple solution to this lack of shovel-ready land in Barrie. As the Hemson report makes clear, the land designated for industry in south Barrie are much, much more attractive to employers in terms of parcel size, highway access and topography than the land targeted in Oro-Medonte and Springwater, and could be brought on-stream much sooner.
With the province’s help, current efforts to service those lands could be advanced. Premier Doug Ford, who has made public statements appearing to back Barrie’s need for more industrial land, could write a cheque tomorrow to bring this about.
It would be a win for Barrie and remove a potential election issue, at least in the townships, ahead of the next provincial vote, widely expected next year.
Barry Ward is a veteran editor and journalist who also served on Barrie city council for 22 years. His column appears regularly on BarrieToday.
